Once you have drawn a path you need to give it substance by
either stroking or filling it--in
essence, painting the path you have created. This is necessary
because paths do not actually take up any space and will not
print out on a printer.

Make sure that any stroking or filling is done on a separate
layer, not on the image itself (often called "Background"
in the Layers window). See Drawing.

1. The first step is to choose the color you want your letters
to be. In a black and white image, we usually reserve black for
letters we are sure of, gray for letters or parts of letters
we are reasonably sure of but cannot actually see, and white
for letters we are reconstructing. In a color image the choices
are almost infinite--as a rule one wants a color that will contrast
with the background image. See Color
Selection for instructions.

2. On the Paths window, click on the right arrow and select
"Fill Path."

Fill Path on Paths menu

A box will appear with options for filling. One can choose
such options as foreground color, background color, black, white,
50% gray, etc. In most cases opacity will stay at 100%, mode
will be "Normal," and the Feather Radius will be "0"
pixels.

Fill subpath in Paths menu

Fill options

3. Alternatively, one can click on the "fill path"
icon on the Paths window. This automatically fills the path with
the foreground color.

Paths window with icons

Path filled with foreground color

4. It is also possible to select a path first, then fill it.

Path selected, then filled

5. At times, a letter may have several subpaths--particularly
if one is trying to draw individual strokes to distinguish stroke
order. One can fill all the subpaths with the same color, or
use different colors to indicate stroke order.